RIG Unique Shipset 4.0

For best compat, put my mod first so other mods, such as UI mods, load over mine.

Hello. I’m Gray. It’s my great pleasure to present to the Stellaris community, my massive many years-long project. The total conversion, RIG Unique Shipset. A mod like no others. I think….

In the base game, your choice of shipset is effectively meaningless. Avians, Mammalians, Lithiods, whatever. You’ll receive the same ships and weapons. Thus the same play style, every time. RIG seeks to change this. Pictured below is a comparison, highlighting a ‘meta’ build from just one (1) of sixteen (16) factions to choose from.

I hope that got your attention, because this isn’t just a typical ship rework or ‘new hulls’ mod. Unlike other ship mods, RIG is an intensive combat tech-tree rework; An entire art rework featuring S M L XL icons for everything relevant; A massive AI rework to accommodate the new play styles; As well as role bonuses for each ship, to help promote each ship’s personality within a fleet. Such as the humble Arthropoid Corvette.

Each ship has a ‘role bonus’ that guides its personality in the fleet. This bonus levels up as you progress the tech tree, then alters based on your ascension perk choices. As can be seen in the above image, the Psychic role bonus is a possible choice for this Arthropoid.

Lets talk more about ascend perks.

As mentioned, in RIG, your ascend perk will have an enormous impact on your ship designs and play style. Some choices are synergistic, some asymmetric. Some just outright insane and absurd. From top to bottom, the ascend perk paths are as follows.

Archaeological
Synthetic (bio>machine)
Machine (only)
Hivemind (only)
Biological
Psychic
CRISIS (become Crisis)
— Fallen Empire (cosmogenisis in the workshop photos) —

In the original game, the crisis choice felt underwhelming, something as important as becoming a galactic crisis should mean something beyond a button click. With this mod, you become something that legends are forged from. The items associated with crisis, are unlocked through tech and menace score. This is partly because of balance, partly because progression. If any empire chooses to go crisis, you’ll feel it. Here is an example.

As ships in RIG are significantly stronger than the vanilla game, this proved to be a problem when balancing against starbases. The solution was two fold. One, upgrade starbases to become serious threats. All starbases have their own ‘starbase’ weapon sets. Effectively, the weapons on starbases, have moved up a weight class. P = S / S = M / M = L / L = XL / XL = XXL. You get the point. And two, all factions have level 1 / 2 / 3 platforms again.

Understandably, when you see the true scope of RIG, most things won’t be compatible with RIG. You should assume any mods that edit ships, like NSC, are incompatible. While some ship mods might work, this mod is designed to be played without other ship altering mods.

To be clear. NSC = No.

Weapon/item mods should work with this, so long as those other mods only add new things. However, you might find conflicts with other mods and AI logic.

ACOT: People ask me about this. I have no idea. I don’t use ACOT.

As this mod adds logic to shipsets, there are a bunch of mods which also add shipsets. I am constantly scanning the mod workshop for other shipsets that i like. If I do, I’ll add them to the mod. Currently, only one shipset is compatible with RIG.

Machine set
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077186491

Gigastructures: Almost done. It’s functional now. About 80%
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1121692237

As this mod evolves, I will balance, I will add shipsets, I will improve the set as best as I can. Hell, I would love to see this mod be highlighted by the Stellaris devs one day. But that’s unlikely to happen. Until then, please post your feedback in the comments below. Bugs, or code suggests are very welcome.

Also, i have started work on a rather large upgrade to the god choices. The items for Psychic ascend will operate a bit differently to all the other techs in the game. In this case, you unlock the starting base item, then if you dedicate your empire to a god, items will immediately mutate into something new. Here’s a bit of a tease for that.

This is a massive mod, I cannot say that it’s currently balanced. I’ve tried to balance with maths, but overall, I’m only one person.